Python webbrowser - Open a url without https://

Question

I am trying to get python to open a website URL. This code works.

import webbrowser url = 'http://www.example.com/' webbrowser.open(url) 

I have noticed that python will only open the URL is it has https:// at the beginning.

Is it possible to get python to open the URL if it's in any of the formats in the examples below?

url = 'http://www.example.com/' url = 'https://example.com/' url = 'www.example.com/' url = 'example.com/' 

The URLs will be pulled from outside sources so I can't change what data i receive.

I have looked at the python docs, and can't find the answer on stackoverflow.

Answer 1

Why not just add it?

if not url.startswith('http') if url.startswith('www'): url = "http://" + url else url = "http://www." + url 

Answer 2

If you really don't want to change the url string (which is quite fast and easy) like stazima said, then you can use Python 3. It supports all the listed url types in your question (tested them).